I had a friend ask me the other day for advice on printers. So I give the standard line when asked for free IT support from family and friends. “What are you planning to do with whatever the device is that you are thinking of buying”. The answer I got back was just the sort of answer I look for when trying to provide help and guidance that is not likely to come back and bite me later. You know the “You said that I should buy this and it is a pile of junk”, or words to that effect, sort of comment.

The answer was. “Well what we are really looking for is just a basic printer for printing a few documents a week. Colour is not important. We don’t need a scanner. We have an PC running Windows XP.”

This is nice because it means I have a much better chance of making a recommendation that matches their requirements, than if I had just been asked to recommend a printer. So what did I recommend? Well basically, any of the low end printers like the Canon PIXMA iP1800 Inkjet Photo Printer or the Epson Stylus Photo D78 Inkjet Printer would meet the requirements. Both of these choices will actually print colour and photos quite reasonably as well if that becomes a requirement in the future.

If I had just been asked generally to suggest a good printer it would probably have been the HP Photosmart C7180 All-in-One Inkjet Printer like we discussed in a previous post.